I honestly can't believe this. So apparently Oracle is going to stop providing the Java SE runtime for free. First they are going to be pulling it back from commercial customers, demanding they buy a "license subscription" in order to install and use it. But that is just the first step, with plans to pull the public version at the end of 2020. WTF does Oracle think they are doing? I know there are not a ton of fans of Java here, but it is pretty important in the software development world.

Well my prediction of Goodbye Java just sped up 10 years. Everyone is abandoning Java. If I told you 10 years ago that blockbuster would have 1 store in Alaska left in 10 years you would have laughed at me.

I wouldn't have agreed even 2 or 3 years ago, as statistical adoption rates of Java kept going higher and higher. However, two major things have happened since then that really change the landscape: Google backing Kotlin for Android development and Microsoft creating .NET Core. Google keeping Android tied to Java was a huge perk for Oracle, even if publicly they always claimed that Google stole it from them and took them to court over it. Android kept Java relevant. And .NET Core puts a nail in one of the last solid positives of Java, which was that it ran on the much more popular (for enterprises) Linux whereas .NET did not.

I can only assume this outlandish decision is just Oracle buckling down and trying to squeeze as much money as they can out of the husk of Java. It seems like it is quickly going to fade away to the status of something like Delphi with this strategy: highly profitable for Oracle for the users it does have, but with a very small number of them.

It really is. However, I don't think it will go as fast as Flash went. Really, nothing has ever disappeared like Flash did. It disappeared almost overnight, it feels. Adobe didn't even really try to hang on. They pivoted Flash to become a full animation tool pretty shortly thereafter. I think Android discontinuing their Flash player was what finally prompted the overnight exodus of Flash, because they had already lost iPhones from launch.

It may not be as visible to the public, but I am sure there are a ton of enterprises that will just pay the license because it is a fraction the cost of rebuilding their entire enterprise application. But it may seriously make a lot of teams think twice about starting a new application with it. I guess we will see

I think of it like WOW. For years we all messed with each other about the WOW Killer. Now its not even a joke any more. So many more games have surpassed it. Fortnite has 40 million monthly players. Wow never got close. It is one of those things you wake up one day and go "oh sh$t what happened to that?"

Well, actually WoW still has the most paying subscribers of any game. Of course that doesn't really mean a ton anymore since most games are F2P these days. I guess it still means that WoW is earning yachts of money off of WoW, even after all of these years. But yeah, the expansions are jokes. When "Mists of Pandaria" or whatever it was called came out, I saw the trailer and could only ask "Are you freaking serious?"